Stephen Hero Page 9

  A week before the date fixed for the reading of the paper Stephen consigned a small packet covered with neat characters into the Auditor’s hands. McCann smacked his lips and put the manuscript into the inside pocket of his coat:

  — I’ll read this tonight and I’ll see you here at the same hour tomorrow. I think I know all that is in it beforehand.

  The next [evening] afternoon McCann reported: — Well, I’ve read your paper.

  — Well?

  — Brilliantly written — a bit strong, it seems to me. However I gave it to the President this morning to read.

  — What for?

  — All the papers must be submitted to him first for approval, you know.

  — Do you mean to say, said Stephen scornfully, that the President must approve of my paper before I can read it to your society!

  — Yes. He’s the Censor.

  — What a valuable society!

  — Why not?

  — It’s only child’s play, man. You remind me of children in the nursery.

  — Can’t be helped. We must take what we can get.

  — Why not put up the shutters at once?

  — Well, it is valuable. It trains young men for public speaking — for the bar and the political platform.

  — Mr Daniel could say as much for his charades.

  — I daresay he could.

  — So this Censor of yours is inspecting my essay?

  — Well. He’s liberal-minded …

  — Ay.

  While the two young men were holding this conversation on the steps of the Library, Whelan, the College orator * came up to them. This suave rotund young man, who was the Secretary of the Society, was reading for the Bar. His eyes regarded Stephen now with mild, envious horror and he forgot all his baggage from Attica:

  — Your essay is tabu, Daedalus.

  — Who said so?

  — The Very Reverend Dr Dillon.

  The delivery of this news was followed by a silence during which Whelan slowly moistened his lower lip with saliva from his tongue and McCann made ready to shrug his shoulders.

  — Where is the damned old fool? said the essayist promptly.

  Whelan blushed and pointed his thumb over his shoulder. Stephen in a moment was half across the quadrangle. McCann called after him:

  — Where are you going?

  Stephen halted but, discovering that he was too angry to trust himself to speak, he merely pointed in the direction of the College, and went forward quickly.

  So after all his trouble, thinking out his essay and composing his periods, this old fogey was about to prohibit it! His indignation settled into a mood of politic contempt as he crossed the Green. The clock in the hall of the College pointed to half past three as Stephen addressed the « doddering » door-porter. He had to speak twice, the second time with a distinct, separated enunciation, for the door-porter was rather stupid and deaf:

  — Can — I — see — the — President?

  The President was not in his room: he was saying his office in the garden. Stephen went out into the garden and went down towards the ball-alley. A small figure wrapped in a loose Spanish- looking black cloak presented its back to him near the far end of the side-walk. The figure went on slowly to the end of the walk, halted there for a few moments, and then turning about presented to him over the edge of a breviary a neat round head covered with curly grey hair and a very wrinkled face of an indescribable colour: the upper part was the colour of putty and the lower part was shot with slate colour. The President came slowly down the side-walk, in his capacious cloak, noiselessly moving his grey lips as he said his office. At the end of the walk he halted again and looked inquiringly at Stephen. Stephen raised his cap and said “Good evening, sir.” The President answered with the smile which a pretty girl gives when she receives some compliment which puzzles her — a ‘winning’ smile:

  — What can I do for you? he asked in a [wonderfully] rich deep calculated voice.

  — I understand, said Stephen, that you wish to see me about my essay — an essay I have written for the Debating Society.

  — O, you are Mr Daedalus, said the President more seriously but still agreeably.

  — Perhaps I am disturbing …

  — No, I have finished my office, said the President.

  He [started] began to walk slowly down the path at such a pace as implied invitation. Stephen kept therefore at his side.

  — I admire the style of your paper, he said firmly, very much but I do not approve at all of your theories. I am afraid I cannot allow you to read your paper before the Society.

  They walked on to the end of the path, without speaking. Then Stephen said:

  — Why, sir?

  — I cannot encourage you to disseminate such theories among the young men in this college.

  — You think my theory of art is a false one?

  — It is certainly not the theory of art which is respected in this college.

  — I agree with that, said Stephen.

  — On the contrary, it represents the sum-total of modern unrest and modern freethinking. The authors you quote as examples, those you seem to admire …

  — Aquinas?

  — Not Aquinas; I have to speak of him in a moment. But Ibsen, Maeterlinck … these atheistic writers …

  — You do not like …

  — I am surprised that any student of this college could find anything to admire in such writers, writers who usurp the name of poet, who openly profess their atheistic doctrines and fill the minds of their readers with all the garbage of modern society. That is not art.

  — Even admitting the corruption you speak of I see nothing unlawful in an examination of corruption.

  — Yes, it may be lawful — for the scientist, for the reformer …

  — Why not for the poet too? Dante surely examines and upbraids society.

  — Ah, yes, said the President explanatorily, with a moral purpose in view: Dante was a great poet.

  — Ibsen is also a great poet.

  — You cannot compare Dante and Ibsen.

  — I am not doing so.

  — Dante, the lofty upholder of beauty, the greatest of Italian poets, and Ibsen, the writer above and beyond all others, Ibsen and Zola, who seek to degrade their art, who pander to a corrupt taste …

  — But you are comparing them!

  — No, you cannot compare them. One has a high moral aim — he ennobles the human race: the other degrades it.

  — The lack of a specific code of moral conventions does not degrade the poet, in my opinion.

  — Ah, if he were to examine even the basest things, said the President with a suggestion of tolerance in store, [that] it would be different if he were to examine and then show men the way to purify themselves.

  — That is for the Salvationists, said Stephen.

  — Do you mean …

  — I mean that Ibsen’s account of modern society is as genuinely ironical as Newman’s account of English Protestant morality and belief.

  — That may be, said the President appeased by the conjunction.

  — And as free from any missionary intention.

  The President was silent.

  — It is a question of temper. Newman could refrain from writing his Apologia for twenty years.

  — But when he came out on him! said the President with a chuckle and an expressive incompletion of the phrase. Poor Kingsley!

  — It is all a question of temper — one’s attitude towards society whether one is poet or critic.

  — O, yes.

  — Ibsen has the temper of an archangel.

  — It may be: but I have always believed that he was a fierce realist like Zola with some kind of a new doctrine to preach.

  — You were mistaken, sir.

  — This is the general opinion.

  — A mistaken one.

  — I understood he had some doctrine or other — a social doctrine, free living, and an artistic doctrine, unbridled licenc
e — so much so that the public will not tolerate his plays on the stage and that you cannot name him even in mixed society.

  — Where have you seen this?

  — O, everywhere … in the papers.

  — This is a serious argument, said Stephen reprovingly.

  The president far from resenting this hardy statement seemed to bow to its justice: no-one could have a poorer opinion of the half-educated journalism of the present day than he had and he certainly would not allow a newspaper to dictate criticism to him. At the same time there was such a unanimity of opinion everywhere about Ibsen that he imagined …

  — May I ask you if you have read much of his writing? asked Stephen.

  — Well, no … I must say I …

  — May I ask you if you have read even a single line?

  — Well, no … I must admit …

  — And surely you do not think it right to pass judgment on a writer a single line of whose writing you have never read?

  — Yes, I must admit that.

  Stephen hesitated after this first success. The President resumed:

  — I am very interested in the enthusiasm you show for this writer. I have never had any opportunity to read Ibsen myself but I know that he enjoys a great reputation. What you say of him, I must confess, alters my view of him considerably. Some day perhaps I shall …

  — I can lend you some of the plays if you like, sir, said Stephen with imprudent simplicity.

  — Can you indeed?

  Both paused for an instant: then —

  — You will see that he is a great poet and a great artist, said Stephen.

  — I shall be very interested, said the President with an amiable intention, to read some of his work for myself. I certainly shall.

  Stephen had an impulse to say “Excuse me for five minutes while I send a telegram to Christiania” but he resisted his impulse. During the interview he had occasion more than once to put severe shackles on this importunate devil within him whose appetite was on edge for the farcical. The President was beginning to exhibit the liberal side of his character, but with priestly cautiousness.

  — Yes, I shall be most interested. Your opinions are somewhat strange. Do you intend to publish this essay?

  — Publish it!

  — I should not care for anyone to identify the ideas in your essay with the teaching in our college. We receive this college in trust.

  — But you are not supposed to be responsible for everything a student in your college thinks or says.

  — No, of course not … but, reading your essay and knowing you came from our college, people would suppose that we inculcated such ideas here.

  — Surely a student of this college can pursue a special line of study if he chooses.

  — It is just that which we always try to encourage in our students but your study, it seems to me, leads you to adopt very revolutionary … very revolutionary theories.

  — If I were to publish tomorrow a very revolutionary pamphlet on the means of avoiding potato-blight would you consider yourself responsible for my theory?

  — No, no, of course not … but then this is not a school of agriculture.

  — Neither is it a school of dramaturgy, answered Stephen.

  — Your argument is not so conclusive as it seems, said the President after a short pause. However I am glad to see that your attitude towards your subject is so genuinely serious. At the same time you must admit that this theory you have — if pushed to its logical conclusion — would emancipate the poet from all moral laws. I notice too that in your essay you allude satirically to what you call the ‘antique’ theory — the theory, namely, that the drama should have special ethical aims, that it should instruct, elevate and amuse. I suppose you mean Art for Art’s sake.

  — I have only pushed to its logical conclusion the definition Aquinas has given of the beautiful.

  — Aquinas?

  — Pulcra sunt quae visa placent. He seems to regard the beautiful as that which satisfies the esthetic appetite and nothing more — that the mere apprehension of which pleases …

  — But he means the sublime — that which leads man upwards.

  — His remark would apply to a Dutch painter’s representation of a plate of onions.

  — No, no; that which pleases the soul in a state of sanctification, the soul seeking its spiritual good.

  — Aquinas’ definition of the good is an unsafe basis of operations: it is very wide. He seems to me almost ironical in his treatment of the “appetites.”

  The President scratched his head a little dubiously—

  — Of course Aquinas is an extraordinary mind, he murmured, the greatest doctor of the Church: but he requires immense interpretation. There are parts of Aquinas which no priest would think of announcing in the pulpit.

  — But what if I, as an artist, refuse to accept the cautions which are considered necessary for those who are still in a state of original stupidity?

  — I believe you are sincere but I will tell you this as an older human being than you are and as a man of some experience: the cult of beauty is difficult. Estheticism often begins well only to end in the vilest abominations of which …

  — Ad pulcritudinem tria requiruntur.

  — It is insidious, it creeps into the mind, little by little …

  — Integritas, consonantia, claritas. There seems to me to be effulgence in that theory instead of danger. The intelligent nature apprehends it at once.

  — S. Thomas of course …

  — Aquinas is certainly on the side of the capable artist. I hear no mention of instruction or elevation.

  — To support Ibsenism on Aquinas seems to me somewhat paradoxical. Young men often substitute brilliant paradox for conviction.

  — My conviction has led me nowhere: my theory states itself.

  — Ah, you are a paradoxist, said the President smiling with gentle satisfaction. I can see that … And there is another thing — a question of taste perhaps rather than anything else — which makes me think your theory juvenile. You don’t seem to understand the importance of the classical drama … Of course in his own line Ibsen also may be an admirable writer …

  — But, allow me, sir, said Stephen. My entire esteem is for the classical temper in art. Surely you must remember that I said …

  — So far as I can remember, said the President lifting to the pale sky a faintly smiling face on which memory endeavoured to bring a vacuous amiability to book, so far as I can remember you treated the Greek drama — the classical temper — very summarily indeed, with a kind of juvenile … impudence, shall I say?

  — But the Greek drama is heroic, monstruous. [sic] Eschylus is not a classical writer!

  — I told you you were a paradoxist, Mr Daedalus. You wish to upset centuries of literary criticism by a brilliant turn of speech, by a paradox.

  — I use the word ‘classical’ in a certain sense, with a certain definite meaning, that is all.

  — But you cannot use any terminology you like.

  — I have not changed the terms. I have explained them. By ‘classical’ I mean the slow elaborative patience of the art of satisfaction. The heroic, the fabulous, I call romantic. Menander perhaps, I don’t know …

  — All the world recognises Eschylus as a supreme classical dramatist.

  — O, the world of professors whom he helps to feed …

  — Competent critics, said the President severely, men of the highest culture. And even the public themselves can appreciate him. I have read, I think, in some … a newspaper, I think it was … that Irving, the great actor, Henry Irving produced one of his plays in London and that the London public flocked to see it.

  — From curiosity. The London public will flock to see anything new or strange. If Irving were to give an imitation of a hard-boiled egg they would flock to see it.

  The President received this absurdity with unflenching gravity and when he had come to the end of the path, he halted for a few instants before le
ading the way to the house.

  — I do not predict much success for your advocacy in this country, he said generally. Our people have their faith and they are happy. They are faithful to their Church and the Church is sufficient for them. Even for the profane world these modern pessimistic writers are a little too … too much.

  With his scornful mind scampering from Clonliffe College to Mullingar Stephen strove to make himself ready for some definite compact. The President had carefully brought the interview into the region of chattiness.

  — Yes, we are happy. Even the English people have begun to see the folly of these morbid tragedies, these wretched unhappy, unhealthy tragedies. I read the other day that some playwright had to change the last act of his play because it ended in catastrophe — some sordid murder or suicide or death.

  — Why not make death a capital offence? said Stephen. People are very timorous. It would be so much simpler to take the bull by the horns and have done with it.

  When they reached the hall of the College the President stood at the foot of the staircase before going up to his room. Stephen waited silently:

  — Begin to look at the bright side of things, Mr Daedalus. Art should be healthy first of all.

  The President gathered in his soutane for the ascent with a slow hermaphroditic gesture:

  — I must say you have defended your theory very well … very well indeed. I do not agree with it, of course, but I can see you have thought it all out carefully beforehand. You have thought it out carefully?

  — Yes, I have.

  — It is very interesting — a little paradoxical at times and a little juvenile — but I have been very interested in it. I am sure too that when your studies have brought you further afield you will be able to amend it so as to — fit in more with recognised facts; I am sure you will be able to apply it better then — when your mind has undergone a course of … regular … training and you have a larger, wider sense of … comparison …